Blogs

Category: Mobile App Design

Mobile devices are an integral part of our life. There are numerous things around us but mobile is something we always keep close to ourselves. If your smartphone is lost, you will be paranoid. In that desperate time, your top most priority will be to purchase a new mobile phone to get along in the life.

Did you get that?

This is the relevance of the mobile phones in your life. Mobile is with us every second. As a business owner, it will be one of the most profound assets for reaching your prospects.

Yes, give it a thought and you will understand what point I am making.

With business perspective, the mobile platform is imperative. This is the principle reason for a business to develop a mobile app. It will give your business kudos and act as a quick platform to interact with your user and serve them well.

What’s next?

So, you have decided to develop a mobile app for your business. The next thing you will do here is to choose a platform where you want to develop the app. Choosing the right reaping ground is paramount. I believe this decision of choosing platform for mobile development entirely depends on the nature of your business.

The Secret War of Mobile Platforms

From the dawn of mobile apps, there is a war between the type of approaches is waging. No one can say when it starts and when it is going to end but it is there and it is happening. You must have heard about native apps and hybrid apps. Which will be the salvation for your business entirely depends in the nature of your business.

It is the main reason I decided to write a post about it to clear out some conflicting facts about the native and hybrid apps. In addition to that, I am also adding one more perspective which is the cross-platform app. With the help of this post, you can easily comprehend which approach is better for your business and which is not.

When this post will be over, you will thank me.

So, without further ado, let’s get you started.

Native VS Hybrid VS Cross Platform

As I mentioned above, the secret war between the different mobile apps is waging and you need to get it right if you want to leverage the complete benefit of the mobile application.

In this section of the post, I have distributed points regarding the different mobile development approaches covering all the advantages and disadvantages of them.

What is a Native Mobile App?

Let’s first understand what a native mobile app is. Native mobile apps are the most common type of apps. In layman’s language, they are the apps designed for a specific platform and developed in the languages accepted by these platforms. For instance, if you are designing a mobile app for iOS platform, then you will use Objective-C and Swift. On the other hand, if you are designing a mobile app for Android platform, then the accepted language will be Java.

Just to make things clear, the two big conglomerates Apple and Google made their stance quite clear in this. Google preferred Android while Apple sticks with its iOS. With that, they launched their own interface elements and development tools.

Ample amount of companies invest in native mobile apps. Why? Have a look at the benefits given below and you will understand why native applications are preferred.

The Benefits of Native Apps You Must Know

Since native applications are developed for the specific platform, they are deemed to be responsive and lightning fast.

They are meant to operate at the higher performance rate.

When we talk about user inputs and outputs, native apps are the best. They are interactive, smoother and intuitive.

As a native application is a design with respect to a particular platform, the developer has the full liberty to optimize the app as per the native platform by any means available.

You can also add an offline feature which you cannot find in a hybrid application.

The native SDKs allow you to access the device’s native features such as GPS. They are not dependent on open source libraries such as Ionic and Cordova.

A native UI allows the users to learn the app efficiently and quickly. In addition to that, the user experience is better and engaging.

The security of the native app is also very robust.

These points really make it easy to choose native applications over the hybrid. However, I reckon you to wait until the end.

Drawbacks of Native Apps

In this section, I want you to understand certain disadvantages of native apps. For a business, it is imperative to identify the disadvantages of native apps. There are possibilities that these disadvantages may or may not affect your business. But knowing them will certainly help you in the greater cause.

Developing native application is a tedious task. It requires separate development processes for every platform. Separate development process increases the development time significantly.

As the above point states, with separate development processes, it requires separate updates as well. It will increase the development time and cost significantly.

With different code base, it is always difficult to release same features on all platforms at the same time.

With variant platforms, the cost of development and maintenance of the mobile application is expensive.

Final Verdict on Native Mobile Application

If you are a business with limited budget, you might want to go for an alternative to native apps as it is expensive and the maintenance cost is also very high. If you are a business who must serve their audience well, then you should look at the costing and go for it. Native apps are user-friendly and lighting fast which ensures better and quality customer engagement.

What is a Hybrid Mobile App?

A hybrid mobile app is like native mobile app which a user can download from the app store of the platform. The real difference lies in the development process which is why it becomes crucial to understand the basic difference between a native and hybrid mobile app.

Let’s have a look at the benefits of a hybrid mobile app to get a comprehensive understanding to utilize them in business.

The Benefits of a Hybrid Mobile App

The hybrid mobile apps are built with the help of technologies such as HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. This makes them functional through all the mobile platforms.

Writing single code for a mobile app means that you only need to write the code once. It will save a lot of development time and money.

You can run a hybrid mobile app as a progressive web app. This provides user easiness.

Hardware-based performance acceleration of a hybrid app is same as of native app.

Hybrid apps also have good user experience and performance across platforms.

Isn’t Sweet?

But wait, before you make your final decision, you might want to have a look at some of the disadvantages of the hybrid mobile app.

Drawbacks of Hybrid Apps

Hybrid apps perform same for most of the apps except some applications such as 3D, HD games, and other high-graphics oriented apps.

A hybrid app must have a native plugin to access the basic platform functions such as the touch ID and camera. If there is no native plugin for that, then it is a tedious task to develop for a mobile developer.

All the hybrid mobile apps are dependent on open source frameworks and libraries such as Ionic and Cordova.

So, what do you understand from this differentiation?

Final Verdict on Hybrid Mobile Application

If your business has a low budget, you can leverage hybrid mobile app development which will cost under your budget. If your business has ample of the budget, then you can still opt for it and for functions like touch ID and other, you can develop codes to enable it in the mobile app.

A Cross Browser Solution You Might Be Interested In

A cross-browser mobile app is a type of hybrid application which will work in all type of platforms. You might be wondering why it is different from a hybrid mobile app. Well, this approach is deemed to be a developer-friendly approach. The amount of code required to develop a mobile app in this approach is the key difference. A developer requires a significant low volume of code to develop a cross-browser mobile app.

Maybe this can be your way out. Give me your thoughts on this via comment and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Till then adios and have a good day.

Looking forward to growing your business website more in the coming year? This is the high time when you must think about it. A new year is about to begin and you have to explore every single opportunity. You must know what technologies should you be aware of, and how should you modify your skills to stay ahead of the curve in UI/UX designing for your website?

UI/UX designing is a dynamic industry. The trends in this industry keep on changing. You work on a technology for maybe a couple months and afterward, you realize that it has been replaced with a more advanced version. That’s why it is necessary to remain up-to-date with the latest trend.

So let’s see some of the UI/UX design trends that can drive the traffic to your website in the coming year:

1. The Illustrations

To win the confidence of website visitors, the website must have a great UX design. As a result, more and more businesses are contacting illustrators. Illustrations have the capacity to make the UX design more visually engaging by adding the personality to a brand’s reputation.

Illustrations likewise make UI components more interesting, interactive and engaging. And no doubt, everybody is tired of stock photography these days. Well-known brands, for example, Dropbox, Google, and Airbnb all are making generous use of quirky and playful illustrations in their advertising, website design and brand personalities.

Typography can help boost the personality of your brand. Typography plays a vital role in the UI design, especially when it comes to delivering your message in a reasonable and compact way. It’s very inadequate if your visitors need to squint to read their favorite content.

Website designers are more focused on typography today than they have ever been before. That is on the grounds that we now understand the part that typography plays in website architecture and the user’s experience.

Site visitors need to comprehend the purpose of a brand, their site, and how to explore it rapidly and effortlessly. Making an important content stand out amongst all with an emphasis on typography is an extraordinary approach to pass on important.

3. Mobile-First Design

With the increase in numbers of mobile users, the mobile first design is now a priority. The idea is to set up a design for the little screen, i.e. Cell phones and afterward taking it to the extra large screen like PC and tablet.

Doing as such has many advantages. To begin with, it consumes less time to make designs for the little screen. Second, once a mobile design is produced, you can include as many features as you need in the huge screen variants.

4. Content-Focused Designs

Mobile-first designs aren’t the only trends that will be the future of UI/UX designing; there are many others with a capability to be the next big thing. One such trend is content-focused designs.

We all know the value of quality content. It can change your client’s perspective towards your product and influence them to buy it. Not just this, it can likewise help your site magically climb Google’s search ranking.

Knowing this, business owners are searching for designs that can join a designer’s creativity with amazing communication skills of a content writer. Hence, the demand of content-focused designs are very high. Before long, it will be an incredible part of UI/UX designing.

The idea behind this strategy is exceptionally amazing. Each time a client scrolls through a site, they see something new. This way, you can describe them your message easily while not intruding their experience. Besides, you can also implement as many effects as you want. Not just this, the technique additionally lessens the bounce rate.

Numerous website owners are showing interest in having the component executed in their applications and website. The element is slowly turning into an integral part of UI/UX designing.

6. Included Voice Experiences

How about a situation in which you are looking over a site, playing with its features and a voice is guiding you through the procedure? Unbelievable! Isn’t it? This is gradually turning into a reality as a number of website owners are having this technology implemented in their sites and applications.

The reason is very basic. Voice integration makes your experience all the more advancing. It seems like you’re being guided by a tour guide on the visit. The trend will soon turn into a game changer in the market.

The world is driving towards a future where the presence of a brand, company or product is the most important thing people can do to retain and attract new customers. Interfaces are vanishing and business models are moving to UI/UX design servicesoriented models that expand the engagement and relationships organizations have with their buyers.

Accordingly, organizations must start looking to enhance not just “what they offer,” as well as “how” they present it. To know the upcoming trends, stay tuned!

The first thing we all need to understand is that design is the most important aspect of creating mobile applications. We live in an era where mobile applications have become a major source of delivering services and doing business. It is really hard to imagine life without smartphones, and mobile applications in them have become a part of our daily routine.

Building a mobile application comes with its own set of rules where creating a strong User Experience (UX) is a big deal for the flow of any application. The User Interface (UI) explores how a mobile application looks and interacts with a user. It defines how an application feels, from the user point of view.

A good user experience puts life into your application which practically means that you are showing the value of an application to the users. The mobile application development company must make your app useful to the users so that no matter what keeps coming back to them. So, let’s learn the best practices for designing a great mobile application.

Below is the list of vital User Experience design principles for creating an attractive mobile application.

1. Avoid Extras, One Screen One Task

The structure of the application should be well organized with the User Interface which is useful and meaningful based on clear cut things, straightening out the unrelated and adding necessary things. Basically, user attention is the motto, so just cluttering your interface will overload your user with too much information: every added button, image and line of text makes the screen more intricate.

Design each screen to support only one action and not many things that obfuscate the user’s mind. Make it easier for the user to use and navigate, and gain benefits out of it.

2. Make Navigation Simple and Easy

Navigation is the most important factor for a mobile application. It should be easy and should be able to help the users to search for things effortlessly, with the complete information they want. It can be accessible, discoverable, and should be able to make the users feel easy to find out by not filling the total screen. There is a limitation for a screen so considering that screen space one can add tab bars and navigation bars which are well suited for it. Users will easily jump from one page to another with easy navigational options.

3. Content Becomes Interface

It is said that content is the king and to prove this saying one should focus only on the content and remove all the needless elements that don’t support the user errands. Draw the attention of the users only towards the sections that are useful for them. Thanks to the reduced attention span that these users should be quickly guided to the content they are looking for.

4. Use of Space

The white space refers to an empty space between the elements of the design or page layout, and is often neglected. However, designers at times consider it as a mere wastage of screen and time. So utilize that free space to put some action aspect that will help drive a call to action.

5. Make Navigation Simple and Easy

Navigation is the most important factor for a mobile app. It should be easy and helps users to search for things smoothly with the complete information they want. It can be discoverable, accessible and make users feel easy to find out by not filling the total screen. There is a limitation for a screen so considering that screen space one can add tab bars and navigation bars which are well suited for it. Users will easily jump from one page to another with easy navigational options.

6. One Touch Functions

Smartphones are addictive, especially that touch screen that makes it easy for users to adapt their design as per screen size. It is observed that most of the time users use their smartphone for surfing different websites and for many other things so the bigger the display is, the less easily-accessible zone will be. Mobile app development companies should try to make sure that the app can be easily used on a large screen with one hand. Place navigation options within the thumb’s reach.

7. App Should Appear and Content Should Be Legible

If we compare with laptops, mobile screens are smaller, which means it’s a challenging work for mobile app developers, where mobile design is difficult to insert information on a small UI. The rule of thumb says that the text should be at least 11 points, so that it is readable at a typical viewing distance, without having to zoom in. The readability can further be improved by increasing letter spacing or line height. A good, generous white space can make the scruffiest interfaces look simple and inviting. It is really important for a mobile outsourcing company to make the mobile application fast and responsive, so that some things in the background need to be done to make it faster.

8. Make Screen Elements Clearly Visible

Use different colors and contrasts to help the users clearly interpret the content. Developers have to use primary and professional colors for the app. Use accent colors that support every type of platform. Keep different colors of every element so that users can easily identify the vision and understand the actions of every element. Mobile app development companies should follow standard rules for text and image for the background screens.

9. Put Your Efforts of Push Notifications

Alerts, reminders and notifications are a daily dose of any marketing strategy. So think twice before sending a message. People often get distracted from such messages that can trouble them in their daily activities. These alerts are really annoying and are usually ignored by the users. However, the best way to establish a mobile application that diversifies messages and creates a great UX.

10. Test the Design

Mobile app developers test each and every page of the application in a large computer screen, as the apps look great when seen on a bigger screen. But some errors and bugs do appear when put it into the real world. Thus, it is important to test the mobile application with real users on an assortment of mobile devices to confirm that it works fine on all the devices. In addition to this, try asking the real users to give reviews and feedback to improve the design.

Summing Up

We hope that the above points placate your understanding of a great mobile User Experience. The mobile app development is no rocket science, however, you need to follow some crucial principles. Your application needs to be useful and beneficial. If the application is not useful, it has no practical value for the user and no one shall be pleased to use it.

An effective mobile application design covers many areas: it should be aesthetically consistent with your brand, should follow the best design practices depending on the platform and the devices being designed for and from the UX viewpoint, it needs to provide your users an intuitive, seamless experience.

At Seasia, one of the best mobile app development companies in India, the end user is the focus of the design decisions. We have a cohesive design process, interconnected with the product definition and discovery, which lets us gather important information about the users, their journey, the pain points addressed by the application, and how to approach the UI-UX in a way that is driven by all these considerations. This allows us not only to consider the utility of the app, but also the usability, even before the development starts.

Start with the User:

One of the biggest challenges that companies face while launching an app is User Abandonment. This happens for a myriad of reasons, but the poor user experience is often caught as the culprit. This is commonly the result of not putting the user at the center of the design decisions.

In a user-centered design, you need to focus on creating a product that addresses the needs and pain points of the users. This means knowing who they are, and what steps need to be taken for them to achieve certain goals or solve their pain.

We, at Seasia, address these concerns during the product discovery itself through the creation of user personas and user journey maps, which is why designers are intensely involved in this process.

Creating User Personas

User personas answer the basic questions about the user: Who, What, When and Where.

Who is the user?

What are the goals of the user for using your product?

Where does the user use the product?

When does the user use the product?

User personas help you in understanding the demography of the end user and gather important behavioral information and insights that will guide the product decisions, including the UI-UX decisions. The designers at Seasia conduct additional investigation after the creation of user personas to fetch more details related to design considerations, which we will discuss in detail below.

Customer Journey Mapping

User journey mapping builds user personas. For each user persona, we map the story ending and all the actions that are needed for the user to get to that point.

From the design perspective, the user journey mapping provides the foundation of the UX in terms of the structure and the user flow. By understanding the actions necessary to get the user from point A to B, we begin to think about optimizing this journey.

Brand Research & Additional User Research

By building the product discovery session, journey mapping and user personas, our designers conduct supplementary user and brand research. We gaze into the existing brand properties to gain an understanding of the right personality, look, tone and feel of the application. We also take a profounder dive into the end users to fetch more information about them and make realistic design decisions. This sets the tone and permits us to comprehend which design elements to place first.

For instance: if we find that a majority of the user demography is 50 years and more, we will avoid certain design elements like thin lines, smaller text and the like.

Prototyping & Conceptualization

We then start with the prototyping and the conceptualization, which centers on the UX of the application. It concludes how the design will flow from one screen to another, how the users will navigate forward and back and more. Usually, the series of the actions that the users need to take is complex, predominantly in large apps with many features. The purpose is to streamline and simplify the user journey from one point to another, so that the user can get exactly where they want, with the least amount of effort.

Research & UI (User Interface)

The User Interface focuses on the style, polish and refinement of the app: things like fonts, color palettes, spacing of the elements, icons, choosing between flat designs and skeuomorphism and more. During this stage, we again carry out some brand research to determine what fits the most for the brand personality and tone.

Uninterrupted Testing & Refinement

This isn’t a step within the process, as we incessantly test, iterate and refine throughout. During the designing process, we test on different devices and different platforms, and have a variety of people conducting user testing. This lets us discover if our assumptions about elements and design decisions need to be reconsidered.

Development & Refinement

Designers work with developers to break the UI into pieces that can then be developed. Again, the iteration and refinement is a large part of this process, so we can create the best user experience and the most technically sound product. The purpose of this cohesive process is to permit us to maintain this flexibility and be adaptable to the changes without disturbing the velocity.

Taking an integrated, user-centric design approach helps ensure that

a) The product is being built especially for your users.

b) We remain adaptable to the changes in the objectives or the project goals.

Eventually, this approach promotes the development of usable, useful products that add value to the users and make their lives a lot easier.